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Snippets

          How upset would you be if there were an outbreak of the coronavirus on the Senate floor?

          Do Rudy Giuliani and Alan Dershowitz share the same brain?

          The spouse asked the NBP what kind of vacations the NBP most enjoyed. Options were laid out: to beautiful natural spots; trips that covered many places; trips that went only to one location; and so on. The spouse finally included in her cataloging a trip designed to visit museums or other cultural sites. The NBP immediately labeled that last option a “nerdcation.” I don’t know if the NBP has already trademarked that designation.

          The reason I can’t speak a foreign language is that I grew up watching American television. A few years ago, I asked a Portuguese waiter how he had learned to speak his excellent English. He said that Portugal, not a rich country, did not dub English television shows into Portuguese but took the cheaper route of having Portuguese subtitles. He said that watching such programming had made his English better than just from school studies. “Yes,” he said, “I can speak English because of Friends.” In the last month I asked a man from the Netherlands about his flawless English and he said that he first learned the language from non-dubbed American cartoons on Dutch television. I only watched Bugs Bunny, Sky King, and Father Knows Best in English, and therefore I only speak a version of English.

          A Mayan guide in Yucatan said that the Spanish brought hammocks to Mexico, and before that Mayans slept on the ground. Mayans quickly adopted hammocks because sleeping on the ground, which had a heavy concentration of lime, caused health problems. The guide, as do other modern Mayans, still sleeps in a hammock. I did not know him well enough to ask about hammock sex.

          I have heard reports that 500,000 animals have been killed in the Australian fires. (Don’t ask how anyone could know the number or even give a reasonable estimate. And are fish, birds, beetles, and centipedes “animals” for this purpose?) Other reports put the dead animals at a half billion. On a first reaction, does one number seem more devastating than the other?

          When the pontificating ass gets to be too much, just say, “I bow to your superior sciolism.”

          “‘One can be cleverer than another, not cleverer than all others.’ (La Bruyère?)” Leonarda Sciascia, Equal Danger.

          Why is it important to learn how to fold fitted sheets, when you can just ball them up and shove them onto a closet shelf? Or do you, as my mommy used to, iron your sheets?

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Let It Snowball (concluded)

My youth is far, far behind me, but I still throw snowballs when given the chance. I still see if I can hit a tree or pole, but shoulder surgeries have made my throwing, like other activities for other reasons, a relatively limp experience, and my targets are much closer than years ago. Even so, each time I pack together a snowball, I feel close to my boyhood and lessons snowballs taught me—how to make a good snowball; how to throw; how to lead a target; how to bob and weave to avoid thrown snowballs; how snowball fights could test my courage; and how my lying skills needed improving.

When I heard the news reports that snowball throwing was banned in a Wisconsin town, I could not believe it. Only a snowflake would want to do that.

On the other hand, I might support a ban on the Dreaded Ice Ball. We learned about the Dreaded Ice Ball through our experimentation in igloo building. We set out in the backyard to build a snow hut. At first, we just mounded snow, but it did not take long to see that walls could not be made in that way. Then someone had the idea of getting a cardboard box, filling it with packed snow, and unmolding it to make a large building block. Better, but no matter how much we tried to compress the snow, the block would crumble when another two or three were placed on top. Third idea: Take the snow block and douse it with a bit of water. Mom’s watering can was rescued from the house; the block was sprinkled; and after it froze, quite a good building material was made. In a normal cold time, when the temperatures were eighteen or twenty degrees, it took a bit of time for the freezing. After a few blocks were constructed and we were waiting around, someone wondered what would happen if snowballs were watered. The experiment began, and the Dreaded Ice Ball was formed. We learned that we had to make the snowballs a little bigger than normal because the sprinkled water shrunk them a bit. They felt heavier. They felt awesome. They felt dangerous. After some had frozen, we threw some against a tree. We heard a Thwak that sounded like a mini-explosion. These could hurt. We instantly realized these could never be used in our snowball fights. We did not want to get hurt, and we did not want to hurt our friends, and these could hurt. In these Cold Wars, this was a forbidden weapon.

And then one day right before the home room period began, whispers went around: “They are waiting for us after school.” No one defined “they.” It had to be the greasers, which in our town did not have the ethnic connotations it did elsewhere. It meant the tough kids. The kinds who had greased-back hair coming to a point in the back. In our provincial place, the hairstyle was a DT, a duck’s tail. Only the greasers could have been out to waylay us. No explanation passed as to why they had planned an ambush. In fact, my friends and I seldom intersected with the greasers. We didn’t have fights with them. But the warning struck fear. We did not want to admit it, but we believed they were tougher than we were.

As the morning went on, it was said they would be waiting at Tenth and Geele. But then the word changed; it would be Twelfth and Bell. The intelligence system was hardly perfect.

By noon, the word was around that they had stockpiled ice balls. The Dreaded Ice Balls. You could hear fear as this was whispered when the teacher’s back was turned.  We would be underarmed. Snowballs are made on the spot, but Dreaded Ice Balls must be made in advance. A source of water is needed, and time is needed for the ice to form. This was dangerous. We did not have adequate means to fight back. That flinty taste of fear was in our mouths the rest of the day. Some were about to cry. What would we do when the school day ended? Would we take our normal ways home and pass the listed combat zones? Would some cowardly classmates take long detours to get to their houses? How would we fight? What if a Dreaded Ice Ball poked an eye out? It was the longest day of our young lives.

So I say, let there by snowballs. But ban the dangerous Dreaded Ice Ball.

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Let It Snowball (continued)

Once I had learned the skill of snowball making, I went on to the art of throwing one. This was aided by the family dog, Tippy (this terrier-mix had all dark fur except for the very end of her tail, which was white.  Get it? The tip of her tail was white = Tippy. The siblings and I thought it was quite clever.) This mutt loved the snow. If she saw snow when the back door opened, she bounded into the drifts that were twice her height. Only her head and back were visible as up and down Tippy went. She loved chasing sticks in the summer, and she loved chasing snowballs in the winter. She seemed to like each activity equally even though there was a great difference. I would frisbee a stick when there was no snow on the ground, and she would run after it and pick it up. She might run around with it for a bit, but soon she would come back to me, stick proudly in mouth. Sometimes she would drop it but more often stand just out of easy reach with a look that said, “Come on, dummy. See if you can grab that stick in my mouth.” I’d make a motion, and she would dart back. But either because I made an especially quick movement or, more likely, she let me, soon I would have a part of the stick not in her mouth. Now her look said, “Come on, dummy. See if you get it away from me.” The tugging war began, and the eight-year-old boy was seldom successful with brute force. Instead, I learned, and she did not (or she pretended not to), that if I lessened how forcefully I pulled, she lessened her pressure on the stick, and then a pull as rapidly as I could, got it away. And then she stood, partly looking at me and partly at the yard, indicating “Come on, dummy. Throw it again.”

Tippy invariably returned the thrown sticks; she never returned a snowball, but she chased them just as diligently. I would throw the snowball in the backyard. She would bound after it, find where the ball landed, and put her muzzle into the snow blanket. She would attempt to pick up the thrown object, but the ball no longer existed after it was chomped on. It metamorphosed back from snowball to mere snow.

Even though there was nothing to return, she returned and stood in front with the look, “Come on, dummy. Throw me another one.” And I would. I never outlasted her. She could be literally shaking from the cold, but she did not want to come in if there was a chance that I would toss another snowball.

For an eight-year-old boy, this was a time to practice throwing in preparation for my major league career that I knew awaited. First, of course, came throwing it as far as I could, but without clear demarcations in the yard it was hard to tell how much I was improving, although I never doubted that I was. Then, I would find a spot that I knew I could throw to and see how close I could come to landing the next snowball there. Then, even though it was not appropriate preparation for the National League, I would see how high I could throw it. That was for my own amusement. Tippy would lose sight of the high-thrown ball and look to see where it landed. If she did see it plop, she was off to chomp through it. Sometimes, she did not see where it landed, and she would turn to me with the look, “What the hell.” And, of course, there was the ever-fun fake throw where I did all of the throwing motion except for letting go of the ball. Tippy took a few steps in the direction of the anticipated flight, and then turned and said, “Oh, that’s very funny. Now throw it.” (This was minor preparation for my Milwaukee Braves career. I planned on playing shortstop where the fake throw would seldom be used, but I might on occasion fill in as pitcher, and I was practicing for that fake throw to third with the quick whirl to first base to see if the runner there fell for the charade. I have seen pitchers do this many, many times. Only once have I seen it work, and the runner looked more embarrassed than Tippy did after tussling with a skunk.)

(continued January 27)

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Let It Snowball

I heard on the news that a Wisconsin town has a law against throwing snowballs. I found this alarming. I could not have imagined being a Badger State boy without throwing snowballs.

Before you can throw a snowball, you must make it, but that is not as simple as it might seem to those who lack a depth of experience in snowball-throwing. Of course, you want a tight round missile that fits easily in your hand, but snow varies in the snowball-making department. The snow needs some moisture for the stuff to make a ball that will cling together as it goes through the air. Generally, the colder the temperature, the less moisture. It may seem counter-intuitive if you have not had years of experience in making snowballs, but it can be too cold to make good snowballs. When it was really frigid, desperate measures were needed if the snow was going to be balled. Gloves or mittens had to be taken off (mittens keep the hands warmer, but gloves are better for throwing, and I almost always wore gloves) and the snow molded with bare hands so that body temperature could melt a little of the snow to get the needed moisture. Of course, in this kind of cold, you did not want to have those gloves off for very long, so snowball fights were short. (We did go out to play in single-digit temperatures. Many years later, when I took my small child out in twenty-degree weather, other New York City parents acted is if I were committing an act of child abuse. I guess they thought that in colder climes kids were kept indoors for three or four months. Now that would have been child abuse.)

Now let’s get to the technical terms. When the conditions were right to pack the snow into a good ball, we would say the snow was “packy.” (Or maybe it was “packie.” Until I wrote this, I have never seen the word written out.) We may not have been like those fabled Inuits, but we did have more words for snow and other winter weather than I hear now. For example, we had a word for one sort of specially dreaded puddle. Snow was quickly and completely removed from the sidewalks after a snow ended. Unless more snow was forecast, we could walk to school and elsewhere without boots, galoshes, or rubbers, a word which got snickers in our early teen-age years although we did not really comprehend the alternative meaning. There could be puddles from snow melt, but the depths were less than the soles of our shoes and not a problem. Conditions, however, often differed at the crosswalks. There runoff from salted streets was often deeper. We learned to gauge which puddles to jump over and which could be stepped in. But we all sometimes made mistakes and stepped into a deeper puddle than our otherwise discerning eyes had gauged it to be. Most often the mistake was not too bad, but every so often the puddle was deep enough that the cold, icy, salty, dirty gutter water came over the tops of our shoes and flooded our feet, with the prospect of an uncomfortable time at school. When this happened, you got a “soaker.”

When the snow was packy, even as a kindergartener I was into the backyard to make snowballs. I had seen older kids in snowball fights, and I had learned early on that just as success in colonial times was oft determined by how quickly a musket could be reloaded, a snowball contest could depend on how quickly you could make the ammunition. There was a fine line here. You wanted the snowball packed tightly both so it would fly true through the air and to make a good impact on its target, but if you spent too much time cupping the snow together, you would be bombarded by an opponent who made them quicker. On the other hand, if you rushed too much and the snow was not balled tightly enough, it fell apart as it was thrown—the equivalent of a musket’s all flash and no ball.

(continued January 24)

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Days of Wines and Tagines

Our guide in Morocco did not drink alcohol.  He said that he had tried but had not liked wine and vodka. The guide, however, was a practicing Moslem, and I assumed that religion was behind his abstinence. I have been told that Moslems are not supposed to drink alcohol. (I have since learned that that is true for the majority of Moslems, but some believe that the Koran only bars intoxication, not drinking in moderation.)

I did not see any liquor stores, and the only bars I saw were in our hotels in the overwhelmingly Moslem Morocco, but at our meals we had plenty of drinkable, inexpensive local wine. Morocco has an active wine industry with most of the product staying in the country. The country has a lot of tourists, but more than tourists must be drinking all that wine. (The guide said that Morocco’s national liquor was very strong and made from dried figs. I did not try it because I could not find it.)

A westerner might see hypocrisy at work in this wine industry, but I remember that I was raised in an American Baptist Church that proclaimed that alcohol abstinence was necessary to get into heaven. This stance is true for most varieties of Baptists. In 2006 the Southern Baptist Convention reaffirmed this position. I have never understood this prohibition since wine is consumed by the godly (including, of course, Jesus) in both the Old and New Testament. My hunch is not that the Bible commands teetotaling, but the reason is more along the lines of what H.L. Mencken said about Puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.”

What I do know is that many Baptists do drink. Polls report that a third of Baptists admit to imbibing. And if a third are willing to concede this “sin” to a pollster, I am sure more than that drink alcohol. There are reasons that swaths of this country are laden with bourbon and Baptists. Probably the jokes I heard when I was fourteen are still told: “Jewish people do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of Christianity. Baptists do not recognize each other in the liquor store.” “Why should you always take two Baptists on your fishing trip? If you take only one, he will drink all your beer.”

If there is hypocrisy about Moslems drinking, it is a hypocrisy shared by other religions and cultures. I am not about to cast the first cork.

The Moroccan wine, which I drank as much of as I could, was served most often to accompany a tagine. A tagine is the vessel in which food is cooked. The traditional Moroccan tagine is earthenware, with a circular, flat base with low sides and a removable cone-shaped cover that sits on the base during the cooking. That cover condenses escaping liquids allowing them to drip back onto the food. A tagine is wonderfully designed for slow cooking and is used in homes and restaurants throughout Morocco. Clearly using one can be a source of pride. Our guide, normally modest, bragged that his wife said that he made the best tagines. Apparently, it is a custom that men cook a tagine on Fridays.

Tagine means the pottery, but it also refers to the cooked food. We had tagines of many foods that can benefit from slow, moist cooking, including vegetables, beef, chicken, and lamb. We also had food that did not benefit from this cooking method—i.e., most of the fish dishes. The Moroccan cuisine is distinguished not only by the tagine pot, but also by the combination of the foods cooked inside it. Vegetables and protein together were obvious choices, but also fresh fruit such as plums were part of a dish. A careful blend of sweet and savory or sweet and sour was common. Nuts and dried fruit, perhaps apricots or dates, or even dried tomatoes were frequently used. And the careful spicing raises the cuisine to what is nearly mythic levels in some places. I have cooked lamb with rosemary, salt, and pepper. The Moroccan cuisine, however, had careful blends of spices. Cumin might be combined with cinnamon and ginger. Or saffron and paprika. Or with spices I don’t know. I am guessing that the best Moroccan chefs are known for their precise and innovative blending of spices. As a diligent tourist, I, of course, bought spice blends to bring home. (Oops, forgot to tell customs I brought back food.) And as a typical tourist, I have mostly forgotten how to use them.

The tagine was almost always accompanied by fresh baked bread. The bread was of many different styles and very good. I don’t know if the French influenced this baking, but the variety, the textures, the shapes, the tastes were about as good as I have had anywhere.

The tagine was usually proceeded by many small plates for the table of vinegary, cooked vegetables— several styles of carrots, beets, eggplant, and the like. Forkfuls from a variety of the dishes made a tasty salad. After the tagine sometimes we had a cake or some other confection, but mostly we had fresh fruit. Altogether, the meals we had were tasty and healthy.

And, yes, I looked for Moroccan cookbooks, but then I thought that it did not make sense to lug around a tome when I could find a good cookbook in New York to teach me Moroccan recipes. I have held on to that thought but so far with no action.

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Snippets

          Are there palindromes in Chinese?

          Do geese see God?

          Was he able before Elba?

          What was the last restaurant to give women (or in this case “ladies”) a menu without prices?

          The Wisconsin Congressman was on Fox News. I was surprised that he was not wearing a U.S. flag pin. Instead, on his lapel was a Green Bay Packers symbol. You might not think that he has his priorities right, but he does for a Wisconsin politician.

          My idea for a book group: Everyone read three-quarters of the same mystery and then get together for a discussion.

          My idea for a blockbuster script: Little Women Walking Dead. Beth comes back as a musical, apologetic vampire.

          New York City pedestrians violate the traffic laws less than they did a generation ago. I was used to walkers coming to an intersection with the light against them and looking for a break in traffic to see if they can scamper across before they get the green. Now if people can’t cross when they get to the corner, they look not at the traffic but down and read, scroll, or text on their smartphone. They don’t look for an opening in the cars and trucks and often don’t even notice that the light has changed.

          What does it say about me that I am disappointed that even though “futtock” sounds dirty, it is not?

          When the men’s room has a solitary toilet, what is the correct etiquette after using it: Put the seat down or leave it up?

“as you both know,

if you worship

one god, you need

one enemy—”

          Louise Glűck, “Witchgrass”

          During a promo for a TV show “Viewer Discretion Advised” came on the screen. I was viewing, but I did not know how or on what I should exercise my discretion. Surely it did not mean that I should not watch the show, but what does it mean to watch a show with discretion? Does that mean with one eye? Or that I avert my gaze every five minutes. Could they be more specific about how viewers should use their discretion?

          I am confused. How can pants I have not worn for a while simultaneously get longer in the legs but smaller in the waist?

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Postmodernist Trumpism (concluded)

I am not trying to say that post-modernism has caused the increasing stack of conservative falsehoods or the acceptance of them. It is almost always impossible to say precisely how trends take root. Ideas often seem to percolate from multiple sources at the same time. But the postmodernistic idea that something is true only if it is true to the individual has escaped academia, entered the general air, and descended on many of us. Harry Frankfort, the philosopher of bullshit, maintains that cultural conditions and epistemological beliefs can help spread bullshit. It proliferates where it is denied that “we can have reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things really are.” In other words, bullshit builds on pillars of postmodernism.

Of course, we get falsehoods on many different topics—often about personalities in popular culture, for example—and there is bullshit throughout the political spectrum. It is not bullshit, however, to believe that never before have we had a president who has provided so much bullshit so regularly. And perhaps we have never before had so many people not just willing to accept it, but to desire it.

What will this pervasive political falsehood and bullshit culture do to our country? For example, isn’t it likely that the proliferation of bullshit and its acceptance will also lead to more people believing that there is no reliable access to an objective reality and no way of knowing how things truly are? And if that happens, haven’t we entered a bullshit spiral from which we might never escape?  

Gary Kasparov has said: “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” (Quoted by Michiko Kakutani in The Death of Truth.) I doubt that Trumpism has that conscious goal. But it certainly can have that effect.

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Postmodern Trumpism

If Trump lied, he would not be as dangerous as he is as a bullshitter. Frankfort writes, “By virtue of [not paying attention to the truth], bullshit is the greater enemy of the truth than lies are. . . . Through excessive indulgence in

[bullshit]

, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the ways things are may become attenuated or lost.”

There may be many causes for Trump’s bullshit—his narcissistic ego may be the prime reason, but there is at least another one. “Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.” Those of us concerned with the truth should give up the notion that Trump will learn what is true and what is not and that the falsehoods will decrease over time. As long as Trump continues to talk about things he knows little to nothing about, the bullshit will continue.

The real issue is not why Trump excretes so many falsehoods, it is why so many people accept, even desire, his bullshit. This is where postmodernism comes in. In a postmodernistic world, we don’t have to go to the trouble of ascertaining what is true because what matters is what is true for me. Many of his supporters surely know that what Trump says is not only false but errant bullshit, but he says what the Trumpistas want to believe. The important thing is that what he says feels true to his audience. And if it feels true to them, then it is true. Postmodernism, once a leftist phenomenon, has found its zenith in a conservative world.

The appeal and power of accepting falsehoods because they feel right, because they are true for me, should not be underestimated. We might think that when everybody has their own truth individuals are separated from each other and the world is atomistic. It is true that in the postmodernist world I don’t have to engage with those who hold other truths and I can remain segregated from them, but believing in falsehoods also brings people together. What Lawrence Wright, in Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief, wrote about a new religious movement has broader applicability: “Belief in the irrational is one definition of faith, but it is also true that clinging to absurd or disputed doctrines binds a community of faith together and defines a barrier to the outside world.”

Wright’s insight helps explain our modern world. Many who believe that we should distinguish truth from non-truth in order to formulate policies and action have their own faith in rationality. They are surprised that as the breadth, depth, and frequency of Trump’s bullshit became increasingly apparent that Trumpistas have not fallen away. These rationalists see the falsehoods as a negative for Trump, but in fact they are a source of the president’s strength. His falsehoods have produced a feeling that such utterances must be true, ought to be true, are at least emotionally true. As a result, they have bound his supporters together, helping to define a needed barrier with the rest of society.

Something like this postmodernism has also affected some who do not support Trump. I have several friends, not Trump supporters, who have said that whatever you think about the president, you have to concede that he has kept his promises. I begged to differ, although a bit more forcefully than that. I referred them to the factchecking website Politifact’s Trump-O-Meter which tracks 102 promises made by candidate Trump in 2016.  It reports that he has kept 18% of his promises, broken 17%, compromised 11%, and the rest are “stalled” or “in the works.” This hardly indicates that he has kept his promises unless keeping less than one in five looks like a promise-keeper to you.

But all promises are not equal. Perhaps he has kept the important ones. All may not agree on what should fall on this list, but Politifact’s list of Trump’s top five promises concludes that only one has been kept, and that was to suspend immigration from terror-prone places. Two are rated as compromises: “Everybody is getting a tax cut, especially the middle class” and “The Trump Plan will lower the business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, and eliminate the corporate alternative minimum tax.” (These ratings raise the question: Can you compromise a promise or is a compromised promise a broken promise?)

The other top Trump promises, according to the fact-checkers, were to repeal and replace Obamacare and to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. Politifact lists both these promises as stalled. That begs the question of how long a promise can be stalled before it is broken. But whether the stalled characterization is correct, it seems clear that these promises have not been kept.

Even so, my knowledgeable and non-conservative friends say that Trump has kept his promises. When confronted with the information showing that he has kept few of them, my friends reply that the specific things he promised do not really matter. The attitude he projects about immigration, Obamacare, taxes, and the like show that he is keeping his promises. My friends are really saying that the truth of promise-keeping does not matter as long as it feels as if promises have been kept. How post-modern of them!

(Concluded January 15)

Posted on by rjonakait

Postmodern Trumpism

If Trump lied, he would not be as dangerous as he is as a bullshitter. Frankfort writes, “By virtue of [not paying attention to the truth], bullshit is the greater enemy of the truth than lies are. . . . Through excessive indulgence in

[bullshit]

, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the ways things are may become attenuated or lost.”

There may be many causes for Trump’s bullshit—his narcissistic ego may be the prime reason, but there is at least another one. “Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.” Those of us concerned with the truth should give up the notion that Trump will learn what is true and what is not and that the falsehoods will decrease over time. As long as Trump continues to talk about things he knows little to nothing about, the bullshit will continue.

The real issue is not why Trump excretes so many falsehoods, it is why so many people accept, even desire, his bullshit. This is where postmodernism comes in. In a postmodernistic world, we don’t have to go to the trouble of ascertaining what is true because what matters is what is true for me. Many of his supporters surely know that what Trump says is not only false but errant bullshit, but he says what the Trumpistas want to believe. The important thing is that what he says feels true to his audience. And if it feels true to them, then it is true. Postmodernism, once a leftist phenomenon, has found its zenith in a conservative world.

The appeal and power of accepting falsehoods because they feel right, because they are true for me, should not be underestimated. We might think that when everybody has their own truth individuals are separated from each other and the world is atomistic. It is true that in the postmodernist world I don’t have to engage with those who hold other truths and I can remain segregated from them, but believing in falsehoods also brings people together. What Lawrence Wright, in Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief, wrote about a new religious movement has broader applicability: “Belief in the irrational is one definition of faith, but it is also true that clinging to absurd or disputed doctrines binds a community of faith together and defines a barrier to the outside world.”

Wright’s insight helps explain our modern world. Many who believe that we should distinguish truth from non-truth in order to formulate policies and action have their own faith in rationality. They are surprised that as the breadth, depth, and frequency of Trump’s bullshit became increasingly apparent that Trumpistas have not fallen away. These rationalists see the falsehoods as a negative for Trump, but in fact they are a source of the president’s strength. His falsehoods have produced a feeling that such utterances must be true, ought to be true, are at least emotionally true. As a result, they have bound his supporters together, helping to define a needed barrier with the rest of society.

Something like this postmodernism has also affected some who do not support Trump. I have several friends, not Trump supporters, who have said that whatever you think about the president, you have to concede that he has kept his promises. I begged to differ, although a bit more forcefully than that. I referred them to the factchecking website Politifact’s Trump-O-Meter which tracks 102 promises made by candidate Trump in 2016.  It reports that he has kept 18% of his promises, broken 17%, compromised 11%, and the rest are “stalled” or “in the works.” This hardly indicates that he has kept his promises unless keeping less than one in five looks like a promise-keeper to you.

But all promises are not equal. Perhaps he has kept the important ones. All may not agree on what should fall on this list, but Politifact’s list of Trump’s top five promises concludes that only one has been kept, and that was to suspend immigration from terror-prone places. Two are rated as compromises: “Everybody is getting a tax cut, especially the middle class” and “The Trump Plan will lower the business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, and eliminate the corporate alternative minimum tax.” (These ratings raise the question: Can you compromise a promise or is a compromised promise a broken promise?)

The other top Trump promises, according to the fact-checkers, were to repeal and replace Obamacare and to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. Politifact lists both these promises as stalled. That begs the question of how long a promise can be stalled before it is broken. But whether the stalled characterization is correct, it seems clear that these promises have not been kept.

Even so, my knowledgeable and non-conservative friends say that Trump has kept his promises. When confronted with the information showing that he has kept few of them, my friends reply that the specific things he promised do not really matter. The attitude he projects about immigration, Obamacare, taxes, and the like show that he is keeping his promises. My friends are really saying that the truth of promise-keeping does not matter as long as it feels as if promises have been kept. How post-modern of them!

(Concluded January 15)

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Postmodernist Trumpism (continued)

          At its inception, literary postmodernism had little effect on the broader world, but it is not surprising that postmodernism spread. The deification of the subjective is comforting and appeals to basic human impulses. It fits into an “I’m ok/you’re ok” world. It tells me that what I believe is valid. It comforts because it relieves me of the often difficult job of finding facts, of ascertaining the truth, or grappling with determining what is good science, history, or journalism. In a world where knowledge is simply socially constructed, I do not have to abide by the standards of good historical, scientific, sociological, or anthropological inquiry. I don’t have to grapple with the strengths and weaknesses of sets of data. I can just stop with my inquiry once something feels right for me. The postmodernist death of objectivity as Stanley Fish says, “relieves me of the obligation to be right.” (Quoted in Michiko Kakutani’s book The Death of Truth.)

          Postmodernism is also comforting because it means I don’t have to grapple with information or views I don’t like and the conflicts, external and internal, that they can cause. My belief is as true as yours. Discourse, analysis, research is all a waste of time. My life is easier. I don’t have to think one of the hardest thoughts: Do the facts indicate I must change my mind? I never have to confront what T.H. Huxley said about science: “The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” Leisure increases and life is simpler without a responsibility for discerning or establishing facts.

          As the lure of this thinking spread outside of academic halls and became divorced from literature, there have been consequences. It helped lead to movements that affect health and safety. It has put down pavement for the anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers. For these people who reject overwhelming scientific evidence, as an infectious disease expert said recently, “Science has become just another voice in the room. It has lost its platform. Now, you simply declare your own truth.” In spite of the statement attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in the postmodern world you are entitled not only to your own opinion, but also to your own facts.

Postmodernism and its initial spread was the creation of anti-authoritarians and leftists, but now the philosophy is imbedded in a Trumpian conservative movement that rejects expertise and research, accepts “alternative facts,” concludes that actions based on gut reactions are better than carefully considered positions, and is regularly based on and spreads falsehoods. I doubt that Trump, while he has all these characteristics, is a product of postmodernism. The postmodernist is like Trump in not caring about objective truth. Postmodernists, however, do seek and care about their own personal and subjective truths. So, for example, the anti-vax mother who heard about one study linking vaccines and autism finds ways to reject all the information debunking that study as well as the information revealing the real dangers in not having a child vaccinated. She clings to her personal truth no matter what the evidence. She cares about her own beliefs. She seeks her own subjective “facts” and will not entertain thoughts or information that question them.

Trump, however, is not even seeking personal, subjective truths. He simply does not care about any kind of truth. Harry G. Frankfort seems to have anticipated our president in his marvelous little book, On Bullshit, which makes a convincing distinction between bullshit and lies. Lying requires a degree of craftsmanship to get the lie accepted, a skill that recognizes truth. “In order to invent a lie at all,

must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth.”

The liar, thus, has a concern for what is true. The bullshitter does not. A bullshitter’s “statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as of the essence of bullshit.” And since our president does not craft lies as much as utter falsehoods with an indifference to the truth, he is not a liar. Stop calling him that! He is a bullshitter.

The bullshitter has more freedom than the liar. The bullshit artist “does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a certain point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, as far as required, to fake the context as well.” Frankfort continues, “He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”

Many wonder how Trump can tell so many falsehoods, or how he can repeat falsehoods that have been repeatedly debunked, or how he can assert things that on their face are blatantly false. They haven’t recognized that while a liar and truth-teller are on opposite sides of the same contest, the bullshitter is not even in this game. Trump does not grapple with the authority of truth, as the liar does. Instead, as with any bullshitter, “he pays no attention to it at all.”

(continued January 13)